The Importance Of Analyzing Your Statistics
Written by Stefan Vervoort on August 15, 2008
It is a fact that bloggers who just starting out like statistics. They tend to check their numbers every five minutes of a day. Is that productive? Is that the right thing to do?
A starting blogger and stats
In the beginning of a blog, the blogger likes every visitor that took the time to visit the blog. Therefore every time you visit your stats you will have a great feeling and that is awesome, but, but you should not forget: checking your statistics will not get you any more visitors!
We will do a little math. Let’s say you check you statistics 5 times a day for 5 minutes. That is 25 minutes a day, 125 minutes a week and 500 minutes a month. 500 minutes is 8 1/3 hour a month! You can write yourself many quality articles in that time, and that will increase your visitor base!
So why the article title?
It is simple. As soon as you are receiving some traffic it is from great importance to analyze your statistics. That’s something else then just looking to some numbers. For example, with a great statistics program like Google Analytics you will be able to learn almost anything about your visitors, with the result you can optimize your blog with your findings!
The importance lies in the knowledge you gain from the stats about what visitors do on your blog. You will know where they are coming from, what the keywords were they’ve entered and found your blog through and you’ll know how they are navigating through your site. I guess you are interested in that.
What is important in statistics analyzing?
In this example I will use Google Analytics, because that is the program I use myself to analyze DivitoDesign’s statistics. Of course, if you look for the same pointers in other stats program, it will work via the same principle.
Important Pointers
In your program, look for the following points. These can help you to improve your blog:
- Referrer logs – People who visit your blog usually come from websites that link to your site or link to some articles you have written. If you know where these people come from, you know which sources work for your blog. You can use that to promote articles in the future.In Google Analytics: Traffic Sources > Referring Sites
- Search engine traffic – Get to know on which keywords your visitors get on your site. Try to optimize those pages some more and try to get higher in the listings, because it might become your most important traffic source.In Google Analytics: Traffic Sources > Search Engines
- New vs Returning – Very important in the long run. Do you have many people just coming for one time, or will many of those visitors return some day to check for news? This point is important if you want to build a community around your blog (which I think is the most important thing in blogging). In Google Analytics: Visitors > New vs Returning
- Bounce rate – Bounce rate is important as it tells you the percentage of people who view only 1 page of your blog. If your bounce rate is very high, you need to optimize your layout, you need to give visitors more reasons to stay on your blog (to let them navigate easy, related articles, popular articles. Learn more).In Google Analytics: Visitors > Visitor trending > Bounce Rate
- Browsers – If you check this part of the stats program once in a while you get to know what your visitor base is browsing with. If you see some new browsers pop on that list, you have to try your website in that browser and see if it displays properly.In Google Analytics: Visitors >Browser Capabilities > Browsers
What about you?
Do you analyze your statistics? What are you looking for when you analyze? Or do you think it doesn’t really matter where your visitors come from? Please comment to tell me what you think and vote on the poll in the sidebar. I am very interested in your opinion regarding this subject!
This article is written by:
Name: Stefan Vervoort
URL: http://www.divitodesign.com
Description: I am a 18-year-old webdesigner and blogger from Waalwijk, the Netherlands. I also blog at WPTOY and work at DivitoMedia.
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Personally I think my stats are gold. Not only do I dig into my Google Analytics but as most of my sites are Wordpress-based I also use the Search Meter plug-in which allows me to see:
a) What keywords people used to get to my sites
b) What they actually searched for when they were on my site
These two sources of information allow me to spot potential new revenue sources and also provides plenty of ideas for new content to be produced.
It’s one of the best remedies for “writers block” when it comes to writing a new blog post. Check your keywords once a month and you’ll likely have a list of potential articles as long as your arm
That’s a good idea! Thanks for the add-on to this article, and that gives me another post idea!
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True. Analyzing your stats will help you choose on what medium you rely on for your traffic should be focused on (i.e links or social media or SEO etc.)
I do a fair amount of analyzing my stats. I try my best to keep my readers on the site for as long as possible. A technique I’ve found that works is to write a whole pile of articles which are relevant to one and other, and link to some of the others throughout each of the articles.
We like statistics? Nah. I could care less how many peopleread my ‘blog.
@Peter – Yes, that is what you want. If people are looking on some subject, it is great for them as well, to have articles on the same subject on the same site.
@Spuffler – Interesting. I guess you are not looking to make any money from your blog or advertise any services? Well, that’s your choice, my opinion is that everyone out there with a blog could better grow their blog with stats.
Nice Statistics powered by google!
Yeah I use google analytics, very good for stats and its free to. Plus its run by google as the name suggests
which means the stats your are given are true to them selves. Good thing about analytics is it has a panel for traffic sources which shows you which piece of marketing is working best.
If you like analytics then you should check webmaster tools
PEACE
uhmm,.. good point on this.
We don’t need to check for visitors all the time but it is important to do research on your analytic at time to ensure you’re on the right track’
@Photoshop Makeovers, @Kok Hong – You guys understand my points! Great. Thanks for the comments!
Watching statistics is like watching download progress. It won’t speed up download but we all do it.
As for GA the best feature is to see what keywords bring traffic to your site.
I think i will start using Google analytics myself. It can prove very useful for analyzing web sites
Google Analytics is a really useful tool and in my opinion is better than the Wordpress.com alternative (although that is a more convenient tool).
I tend to glance at the Wordpress.com stats which are located in my Wordpress dashboard when I log on. If I see anything interesting I then check it out in more detail using Analytics which has a great interface.
This stops me wasting too much time worrying about how many returning visitors I have from Uzbekistan and lets me concentrate on writing.
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Your first sentences of post made me laugh and those words remind me that old days when I was very new to sites and blogging. You know, it now take me several days to check all stats once a week. I am so bust with all other things that I almost always forget to check stats. More often it happen when someone only has a one blog or site and this gradually increase with increase in number of blogs ans sites.
@Matt – I never used or saw the Wordpress.com statistics panel and I think after I heard your words, I shouldn’t! :p
@The Hip Zone – I tend to check my stats very often lately, I guess I ain’t as busy as you. I should, though.
For me, the most important info is on which sites my visitors leave my website…often this is caused by something which can be solved!